


night-blooming (then he will be a true lover of mine)

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 06:17:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9371897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: After the Darkness, after everything, Gilbert Norrell has some loose ends to tie up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sequel of sorts to the Lost Hope AU RP-universe, and you can find the logs here on AO3. It was written in response to a tumblr prompt, and I apologise for it taking so long.

A dead woman roams the halls of Hurtfew. Norrell has not yet got over this. Mind, he still hasn’t got over the knowledge that his house is back home, that he can look out of his windows and see his Yorkshire. Or the knowledge that Strange has gone home to Ashfair. He refuses to think about that, or at least tries to refuse. He focuses instead on the way the Darkness has clung to Hurtfew and whether he can spell it away. The light is queer, as if clouded, as if through greasy glass. That was the first thing he tried, a spell to clean the windows of dirt and magic both, but it didn’t work. His labyrinth has stretched to the whole house, and he can find his way but he’s the only one who can. John can sometimes manage, but he still hasn’t recovered all his memories and it makes things tricky. Joan – Norrell doesn’t know about her. He doesn’t even know if she moves like they do, or if she sees the house the way they do. For all he knows she could be taking the King’s Roads from room to room. He thinks, in a dark corner of his mind, that she could be the trick to figuring it all out – she knows Fairie magic well, after all – but he’s scared to ask, which makes no sense. She’s shorter even than he is, very slight, and most of the time slightly translucent. He’s tried to figure out if she’s younger than him or not, but he can’t quite manage. She’s half his age and twice that, at least, both at once. He’d asked John, once, and he’d shrugged. “Ma always was a law unto herself,” he’d said, and then rolled over and fallen back asleep against Norrell’s side.

Perhaps if Jonathan was home he could think about things properly, work through the fog misting every bit of his mind. He hasn’t done magic alone for so long that he can’t even remember what magic felt like when it was just him.

He wakes up five weeks after Hurtfew came home, extricates himself from under John’s arm thrown across his chest, stumbles blearily into the library, and begins a letter.

 _My dear Jonathan,_ he starts, and then stops. Every sentence that he writes goes the same way; as affectionate as he never thought he’d be able to be, but halting, unsure.

“Morning,” comes a sharp, dry voice from behind him and he jumps, ink skittering across the page.

Joan is standing by the door, poker straight. He can see a little of the bookcase through the soft, piled translucence of her hair, and tries not to shudder. It reminds him of the Gentleman’s.

“Good morning, Mrs Childermass,” he says, somewhat unwillingly.

She moves silently, and it unnerves him. “Finally getting your act together, are you?”

He frowns. “Pardon?”

She gestures to the letter, and he only frowns further. She’s too far away to see it, or she ought to be. He immediately turns back to scan for anything she could have scryed through and sees nothing.

“Mrs Childermass-”

Her smile in response is the twin of her son’s, and it startles him. The similarity between them always does; he’d never even considered that John could be the spit of his mother, and it seems strange that he should be. In truth, even as much as he’d heard of Black Joan, he’d always imagined her like his own mother – gentle-featured, approaching demure, with only her eyes passing down the generations.

“It’s about time,” she says, and he comes back to himself, “Even John can see you pining, and he was always an oblivious fool.”

She says this with fondness, easy and only a few steps from sarcastic, but Gilbert’s eyebrows still raise with incredulity. Then the rest of the sentence hits home and it must show on his face, because she laughs. He can’t tell if it’s kind or not.

“Madam, I assure you-”

“Aye, aye, I’m sure. Don’t make a pig’s arse of it, Gilbert. I’d hate to have to get hanged again for another murder. Once were enough.” She grins at him, sharply, and leaves; Gilbert watches, but he can’t tell if she opened the door or just walked through it. It’s like something stops what he sees from reaching him. But he shrugs it off, eventually, and turns back to the letter.

 

\--

 

On the day that Jonathan Strange is due to come back to Hurtfew, spring blasts through the corridors. The house wakes to ivy blocking the windows and the pale purple of Nottingham catchfly budding between the floorboards, white roses crawling up the walls and wisteria bowing low over the doorways. Norrell sends wards skidding through the house but nothing stops the growth; he stomps to breakfast sniffling and reminds himself to see if the library has anything to say on the matter, later once he’s eaten.

Childermass, once he gets to the kitchen – Norrell and Jonathan used to eat there for convenience, and the habit never slipped – has John’s Farthings in his hair. He smiles softly when Norrell catches his eye, but doesn’t speak – he hasn’t for days, now. But Norrell is practised enough to read him well, and doesn’t need to ask if John wants some of the toast he’s charring. John sits and sighs, runs his hands through his hair carefully. A few yellow petals drift to the floor and Norrell watches them, slightly transfixed.

There is the sound of distant footsteps and Joan comes in, muffled, as if rooms away. She sees the fallen petals and laughs aloud. For a moment Norrell thinks it’s at John’s expense and he readies himself, as much as he can, to argue, but he realises after a moment that it’s genuine; that the queer expression in her face is happiness.

She hums a hardly-audible tune as she makes tea, and John jumps to his feet to follow. Almost daily she’s tried to do something, and nearly every time things fall through her half-there hands and crash to the ground. But today has no accidents; the kettle doesn’t gain another dent, the china doesn’t fracture against the cobbles. The tune gains words as the minutes lengthen, and when Norrell catches her in the corner of his eye she’s in full colour, dark hair swirling as she moves in dancing steps.

“ _Tell him to get me an acre of land,_

 _Where every rose grows merry and fine,_ ” she sings, voice gaining strength until Norrell can hear her without straining, until the words wake up a memory in him. He’d heard it years before, and it reminds him of the hours after harvesting, when he and his uncle were invited to every house from Knaresborough to Rawcliffe and the air was full of drunken music.

“ _Between the salt sea and the salt-sea strand,_

 _Then he will be a true lover of mine,_ ” he finishes, half under his breath, rescuing breakfast from the flames. When he turns, Joan is opposite him pouring tea and she smirks. “Turn up for the books there then, eh Johnny boy?”

John huffs but he’s smiling, and Norrell follows his lead. But no comfort goes undisturbed, he’s learnt, and true to form the soft rushing of the fast-growing roses turns into footsteps becomes a voice, loud and surprisingly missed.

“…and that’s why I told him to be careful who he put his riddles to,” says Tom Brightwind, coming strolling through the back door as if he was expected.

“Born in a barn, were thee?” Joan mutters to the china as Norrell stands floundering; Tom sighs, and the back door closes with a loud, wall-shuddering crash.

“Fair as ever, I see,” he says, and sits on the table, crossing his legs under him. He reaches out and takes one of the cups Joan has already poured – her own, if Norrell is not mistaken.

“Gilbert,” he says with a polite nod, and Norrell jumps back into action, piling the toast onto a plate and putting it on the table.

John gives Brightwind a wary glance and nabs the first bit of toast, ripping it in half and eating it dry. Brightwind, because he has taste, conjures the butter out from the coldstore and marmalade from the shelf, but because he has no manners he smears both on with his fingers. Joan rolls her eyes but says nothing, and if there were a point to saying anything she’d have jumped in already, so Norrell just shakes his head and fetches a knife for those of them with some sense of shame. He looks to share a glance with Joan, some kind of mutual assurance that their fay friend is exasperating and a little too strange, but she’s too busy pouring more tea. The previous humour has vanished from her face and he takes the time to see tension in her shoulders, the occasional words she starts to let out and then bites back. It reminds him of the night he parted ways with Jonathan, the first time - the weight of things unsaid heavy on one’s shoulders.

“You are to blame for the outdoors coming in, then, I suppose,” Norrell says, because they’ve all been silent for some minutes now and it’s threatening to grow awkward.

“It rather brightens the place; do you not think?”

Norrell sniffs, pointedly, and Tom shakes his head in disgust. “You can lead a kelpie to water,” he sighs.

“Horse,” says Joan.

“I stuttered?”

“Fuck off.”

Norrell goes hot with embarrassment and glances at John, who rolls his eyes in such an expansive manner as to make him smile. Tom doesn’t reply, but the expression of irritated amusement stays on his face; Joan finishes making the tea and sits. It does not escape Norrell’s notice that she has done so in such a way that her forearm is a scant inch from Tom’s knee.

They breakfast in silence, which Norrell had given up hope of as soon as Tom strolled in. He cannot quite place why; perhaps if he were better at reading Tom’s face he would be able to tell, but the best he can guess at is unease – not, precisely, discomfort, but something closer to insecurity. Norrell shifts in his chair until his knee is pressed against John’s under the table, seeking reassurance. It’s strange, having the group of them together, after all that’s gone on. John rests his hand against Norrell’s knee and he relaxes back into the chair. It will be better, this time. They have no King after them, any more. Everything that was taken from them has been restored. Yet Norrell sees the chair Joan is sitting in and he thinks of Strange sitting in the same place, scruffy and unshaven and getting jam all over his books, and he smiles. It is not a good smile.

 

\--

 

Jonathan Strange arrives just as Tom is coaxing the ivy away from the library windows to let a little light in. He had taken much convincing, and had even turned with pleading eyes to Joan, but he’d changed his mind quickly after that. Turned to her and spun away again, barely seconds of eye-contact – as if he’d acted out of a habit he’d rather he broke. But anyroad this is the position in which Jonathan Strange meets his second fairy – hanging upside down by a single strand of ivy wrapped around his thigh, arguing with a rhododendron that had appeared, sulking, on top of John’s desk.

Jonathan, to his credit, acts unfazed; he bows slightly, and says ‘how do you do’ loud enough to be heard of the rhododendron’s loud, indignant rustling. The ivy, startled by the sudden intrusion, drops Tom to the floor. He lands on his back hard enough to make Norrell start forward, but jumps to his feet, straightening his waistcoat as if nothing had happened.

“Arrogance,” he says, with a slightly ironical smile that reminds Norrell of Joan, “We meet at last.”

Jonathan seems to run straight past the insult and nods. “You are Tom Brightwind, I presume.”

“Prince,” he says, “Of course, titles are less important to my people than they are to yours,” he adds breezily, “But respect is appreciated no matter one’s origins. Gilbert, I could not convince the ivy to retreat. You will have to find some candles from somewhere. If you will excuse me, I have other business to attend to. Try not to break the world from its moorings again, would you? It makes everything awfully messy.”

He pushes between them and strolls out, singing under his breath. Norrell is almost certain he catches the words _merry and fine_ , but he shakes it off as his imagination.  

 

\--

 

“Is your wife well?” Norrell asks, sitting with Jonathan on the sofa before the fire. Behind them, the rhododendron still rustles bad-temperedly, which Norrell is somewhat glad about for it fills the silence. It does, however, make him a little sneezy.

“She is,” Jonathan says, twisting his wedding ring - a habit that used to make Norrell feel a little ill. Now, though, the familiarity makes it easier to breathe.

“She,” he continues, then falters. “You will recall, I told her not to be a widow? Well, she, ah-”

“She did not remarry?”

“Well, since her new love is Lady Pole,” Strange says, with a little bitter laughter.

“I see,” Norrell’s voice is low, barely above a whisper, and then he stands up, “Excuse me, Jonathan, I must see to…things. I am sorry.”

Norrell tries not to run from the library, and just barely succeeds; to his great relief, Jonathan doesn’t follow him, and he’s free to collapse against the other side of the library doors.

 This, then, is why Jonathan’s response to his letter had been so effusive; this is why he had arrived so quickly; this is why he looks so drawn, so pale. And this, this is why, as close as they had become, there was a line they had never crossed. Jonathan had never been as ready to move on from his wife as he seemed, nor so wide-hearted as to contain more than one love – nor even so wide-hearted as to appreciate it in others.

There comes an itch against his ankle and he looks down to see a small white flower he doesn’t know the name of creeping up his stocking. He sneezes weakly, as if in warning, and to his great surprise the flower retreats a little way. He worries that it will grab him, like Tom with the ivy, but instead it stays there, pressed against the leather of his shoe, and he wonders suddenly if it’s expressing sympathy.

He reaches down, and the flower curls its stem around his fingertip gently before retreating.

“You should be honoured,” comes Joan’s voice from the dark, “Tom’s flowers don’t like strangers.”

Norrell doesn’t bother peering into the blackness to find her; if she wanted him to see her, she would move. He carefully sits down against the wall, not really feeling much like moving himself either.

He thinks he hears the soft sound of her breath halfway laughing, and smiles himself.

“It’s not just orchids that have ears, Gilbert,” she says, gentler now, and he hears the quiet sounds of her walking away.

 

\--

 

He goes back in a few minutes later – he might be heartbroken, but he tries not to be rude about it – and he and Jonathan sit in each other’s company for hours, adjusting. Jonathan tells him of the anxious, restless fear that he has carried with him in the months since the darkness, the dreams, the nightmares, the starting awake in the middle of the night and feeling that he’s back in Hurtfew, back in the darkness. Norrell tells him of John, of the Gentleman, of Joan and Tom, and Jonathan expresses a little half-arsed jealousy at their adventures, which makes Norrell go a little cold. They were hardly adventures – ordeals, trials, but not adventures. He makes sure to mention that neither he nor John have recovered yet, but Jonathan shrugs this off. He, he says, has not recovered from the Peninsula yet either.

Norrell has been around too many bad influences, for he rolls his eyes. Every man and his mother knows of Jonathan Strange and the Peninsula. And true to form Jonathan goes on about this for a good few minutes, until Norrell’s irritation gives way to fondness, to concern. After that, it is as it was before. Awkwardness dissolves, at least a little, and with the ivy blocking the noonlight it is as if Darkness has once again descended. And Norrell understands again why he loves this man and he understands, as well, that he cannot do so alone.

 

\--

 

He tracks down Joan in the herb garden as the sun decides to set; she is sitting on the bench by the back door, trailing her fingers over the cool, carved stone of the bench. Tom’s flowers are dancing around her feet, and she is smiling faintly down at them.

“Mrs Childermass?” he asks, and she looks up.

“Took your time,” she says, and carefully shuffles over so that he has room to sit.

He says nothing for a while, bracing his hands against his knees and breathing deeply. Beside him, Joan laughs quietly again.

“You know,” she starts, “I was in love once. Very deeply, very fast, very foolishly. In a lot of ways he was the worst choice I could have made. We had nothing in common, and everything–”

“Yes,” Norrell says, thinking of magic.

“And for a long time the everything made up for the nothing, and I adored him so much that I thought it didn’t matter when-” she falters, and clears her throat, “What I mean to say, Gilbert, is I thought I loved him enough to overcome everything, to get through everything. That all I needed to get through it was to remember that I love him. But it didn’t work. I got frustrated that I didn’t love him enough to fix everything that needed fixing, and then angry, and then bitter.

“I started to hate him, and I hated him very well because I loved him. And now we’re, well. Who knows. But I mean to say that you can’t just love as much as you can, because love is delicate and painful and downright idiotic. Love isn’t enough. You have to tell them, Gilbert. You can’t just silently put your heart in their hands and hope that they know what to do with it. You have to tell them, and you have to be open, and sometimes you have to argue until both of you are full of pain and anger and then you _tell them_ _why_. Because otherwise it just ruins the both – all – of you.”

Her breath, after she falls silent, is quick and ragged, and Norrell doesn’t know what to do. He’s never been good at comforting people.

“What if it doesn’t work?” he asks, instead, “What if I tell them everything and they don’t...”

“Aye,” she says quietly, “Well, heartbreak’s rough, I won’t lie, but I’ve known you get through worse.”

She leans against his shoulder for a second, then stands up. She’s careful to avoid the flowers, and walks back inside. The flowers don’t follow her, but they seem to watch her go. Norrell reaches toward them, and they press against his fingers like cats.

“ _You’ll pick me out the finest boy there,_

 _And I will make him a true love of mine,_ ” Norrell murmurs under his breath, thinking, and follows her inside.

 

\--

 

The next morning, there are five at the breakfast table. The toast is, as always, rescued too late from the fire; the teapot falls to the floor when Joan suddenly wavers out of sight but it’s caught inches from the floor by a strand of ivy; and Jonathan and Tom have what appears to be a competition over who can eat in the most obnoxiously ill-mannered fashion. And as Norrell searches for the sugar for his tea, he begins to sing.

“ _If you will go down to Rosemary Lane,_

_Where every rose grows merry and fine,_

_Oh, you’ll pick me out the finest girl there,_

_And I will make her a true love of mine,”_ he sings, a little tremulously, but two voices behind him pick it up, stronger, deeper, and when he glances at their reflection in the window he sees Tom hold his hand out to Joan, and he sees her take it.


	2. an epilogue

They are lying in bed together for the first time in so long, facing each other in the faintly moonlit darkness. Clouds are burying most of it, but there’s enough light to see him by, enough light to see the changes the years have wrought in him.

She is lying on one arm, the other resting by his chest. His fingertips are swirling slowly over her hip, into the dip of her waist, up over the lowest of her ribs. Tracing up and then down again, dragging the slightest bit of sharpness over her bones and pressing soft against the channels of her stretchmarks. He’s half lulled her to sleep when he speaks.

“Joan,” he whispers.

“Mm?” she asks, her breath trembling just barely.

“I heard what you said to Gilbert.”

“I thought you must have.” She reaches out, runs her middle finger over the little of his collarbone that goes uncovered by his shirt.

“The orchids tell me you sounded regretful.”

“We have a lot to be regretful over.”

His fingers pause in their tracing and a small, indignant noise escapes her.

“Yes,” he says, but a little laugh makes its way into his voice and his fingers move again, “But perhaps we can change that.”

“Appen we can,” she says, closing her eyes as the last of the moonlight disappears into the coming storm.


End file.
